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First, the "wars" are not "idealistic" - they are legal and they are to follow as laws.

Secondly, the only "burden" is the difference between GPL2 and 3 - a protection against tiviosation and patent issues.

So you two basically said "We write closed source code and we don't give a damn about freedoms". Then use BSD license.

I think, the best way out of situation is for RMS and FSF to nullify the GPL2 and to provide any "protection" only if the code is migrated to GPL3, and license header explicitly states "GPL3 and later"

FSF and RMS stayed true to their mission, while you guys are a disgrace.

The only disgrace here is this "how dare you not try to force others to give me free stuff" attitude of yours.

Originally Posted by pingufunkybeat

Because a few companies are pumping big money into them? Particularly into projects meant to replace the GPL versions.

There hasn't been a huge change, in any case. Fluctuations are normal.

There will always be people who prefer the BSD license. There will also always be projects where the BSD license is the right choice, and even RMS agrees with this: free codecs, reference implementations of basic scientific algorithms, reference implementations of standards, etc. There's lots of that going on: Mesa, OpenCV, ROS, LLVM, X.org, Wayland, WebM... and it makes sense for those projects. It is also a good license for stuffing holes in proprietary operating systems.

But if you're imagining some great downfall of copyleft, then you're way mistaken. GPL (and variants thereof) is still the absolutely dominant license in the FLOSS landscape. And it will remain this way:

- Linux is absolutely dominant as a kernel and unlikely to give up this position.
- All our html rendering engines are (L)GPL: Gecko, KHTML and Webkit
- Most of our productivity suites are (L)GPL: LibreOffice, Calligra, Gnumeric, Abiword... (OpenOffice has been relicensed since the fork, but it is dying)
- All of our toolkits are (L)GPL: Qt, GTK+ (unless you count EFL or Athena)
- Most of our media infrastructure is (L)GPL: ffmpeg, x264, LAME, VLC, MPlayer, GStreamer, PulseAudio...

Good luck replacing any of those with a BSD-licensed equivalent.

The only thing you mentioned that is actually GPL licensed is the Linux kernel. For most practical purposes, a GPL licensed kernel is effectively the same as a GPL licensed kernel. The only differences occur when you want to distribute proprietary code as part of it or reuse code from it somewhere else.

The problem with GPLv3 is that it is anti "tivoization"/DRM, and tries to limit what will be done with the code, while GPLv2 is "pro code sharing". That's a completely different mindset.

Yes the anti-tivoization was the problem Linus has with GPLv3, but it's not something that limits what can be done with the code, it's quite the opposite. GPL is and has always been about giving rights to end users, that is the recipients of the software. One such right is to be able to make changes and run those changes on the intended hardware. This is what the Tivo circumvented by requiring code to be signed by specific key, a key which only Tivo themselves had access to. GPLv3 fixes this loophole by requiring that if you require code signing to run modified code, the end user is entitled to the key necessary to sign his/her code.

Now, this is perfectly in line with the goals of the FSF, which is to empower the end user, this may or may not be what the developer wants, which is why it's so great that we have choice. Linus want to allow a company to deny the end user the right to modify and run his/her code on a device that requires code signing, so he sticks with GPLv2 (well, it's not as if it would be easy to switch even if he wanted to), other developers may want to ensure end users have this right and will choose GPLv3.

Originally Posted by koffie

GPLv3 actually prevents codesharing on more than one occasion, or is forcing some people to release their code under multiple licenses.

The only disgrace here is this "how dare you not try to force others to give me free stuff" attitude of yours.

Are you insinuating that GPL 'forces people to give free stuff'?

Originally Posted by ryao

a GPL licensed kernel is effectively the same as a GPL licensed kernel.

Ehh ?

A thing that has been confusing me, you are obviously a BSD advocate and from the looks of it you have no love for GPL, why are you developing a udev fork (eudev) which is GPLv2 licenced and specifically for Linux which is also GPLv2 licenced? Wouldn't someone who are strongly advocating BSD work on, well BSD software?

A thing that has been confusing me, you are obviously a BSD advocate and from the looks of it you have no love for GPL, why are you developing a udev fork (eudev) which is GPLv2 licenced and specifically for Linux which is also GPLv2 licenced? Wouldn't someone who are strongly advocating BSD work on, well BSD software?

Yes, my question is why someone who advocates BSD is even working on a GPL licenced system component for a GPL licenced kernel (Linux) to begin with. He does this on his spare-time from what I gather, wouldn't he better put those efforts towards BSD-licenced code given that this is what (I am assuming) he prefers?

The only disgrace here is this "how dare you not try to force others to give me free stuff" attitude of yours.

Wow, wow, wow, so you say a self-hating ZFS is actually gathering GPL-hating Linux programmers like you together...? That's something new! You might have stayed BSD, just as in my original response that you perverted - want a "false freedom", stuff like ..."latex women", use BSD license - very reusable, fits any size. No problem with that.

The only thing you mentioned that is actually GPL licensed is the Linux kernel. For most practical purposes, a GPL licensed kernel is effectively the same as a GPL licensed kernel. The only differences occur when you want to distribute proprietary code as part of it or reuse code from it somewhere else.

Excuse me?

Everything I mentioned is either GPL or LGPL. None of it is under a BSD-style license.